Like hardly any other piece of furniture, the sofa represents the spirit and lifestyle of an era. While the sofa of the 1960s was intended mainly for upright seating positions, designers in the 1970s started to create more opulent seating landscapes that were aimed at representing the spirit of this new era. In order to understand the needs of the target groups, the designers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec conducted an in-depth study on user comfort to accompany the design process of the Ploum sofa. “We tried to create a very comfortable settee of contemporary design,” said the designers, describing their motivation for creating this sofa. The Ploum sofa features a broad shape and soft forms, which are inviting and adapt perfectly to the user’s body contours. The combination of materials too offers a highly sensuous experience: covered by stretch fabric, the sofa’s soft foam material offers high comfort and the possibility to recline in very different ways so as “the entire body may be seated on a cuddly and soft space”. According to the designers, the innovative use of this stretch fabric for the upholstery represents “a symbol for modern lifestyles in which flexibility and comfort are considered essential. We conceived this sofa as a ripe and delicious fruit.” The aim of the Bouroullec brothers was to create a sofa for the diversity of life and the “special moments of the day” – the result is a highly organic unity of material and form.
Statement by the Jury
The jury was impressed by the generous dimensions of the Ploum sofa, which the two designers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec created for French furniture manufacturer Ligne Roset. Due to its organic form the sofa offers a low sitting height so that the body of the user is engulfed and embraced by the soft surface. This experience is enhanced by the soft and flexible stretch material. Comfort and aesthetics are perfectly balanced, the jury said. The huge four-seater, with its semicircular shape, makes the seated persons slightly turn to one another. Thus users sit together on a sofa and not just side-by-side.
